On 7 February, the Vietnamese government issued Resolution No. 13/NQ-CP (Resolution 13) to approve the Personal Data Protection Decree (PDP Decree)’s latest draft version. It seeks the Standing Committee of the National Assembly (SCNA)’s appraisal of the draft PDP Decree (for more on the SCNA process, please see here).
Following Resolution 13’s issuance, the draft PDP Decree was reviewed by the National Assembly’s Defense and Security Committee on 8 February. Going forward, the Ministry of Public Security (the PDP Decree’s drafting body) will, taking this 8 February review into account, further update the draft PDP Decree for submission to the SCNA for its approval.
An official timeline has not been provided but reports indicate that an issuance date as early as March 2023 and an effective date of 1 July 2023 were mentioned at this 8 February review.
While the latest version of the Draft PDP Decree has not been disclosed, Resolution 13 does provide for cases in which consent is exempt. We note that listed cases are largely similar to those provided in Resolution 27/NQ-CP/2022 (for our article, please see here) save for the case of processing of data “to fulfil the contractual obligations of the data subject with relevant agencies, organizations, and individuals as prescribed by law.”
Currently, a contract-related consent exemption is provided for in the e-commerce context under the Law on Information and Technology and Decree 52 on E-Commerce. How the seemingly broad consent exemption listed in Resolution 13 will be reflected in the issued version of the PDP Decree remains to be seen.
